A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Pennsylvania State ...

worry my neighbors with the new sentences; but commonly
they cannot see that there is any wit in them. Such has been
my experience with the New Testament. I have not yet got
to the crucifixion, I have read it over so many times. I should
love dearly to read it aloud to my friends, some of whom are
seriously inclined; it is so good, and I am sure that they have
never heard it, it fits their case exactly, and we should enjoy
it so much together,—but I instinctively despair of getting
their ears. They soon show, by signs not to be mistaken, that
it is inexpressibly wearisome to them. I do not mean to imply
that I am any better than my neighbors; for, alas! I know
that I am only as good, though I love better books than they.
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor
with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and
even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality
shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth
with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers.
There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular.
To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is
foolishness and a stumbling-block. There are, indeed, severe
things in it which no man should read aloud more than
Henry David Thoreau
55
once.— “Seek first the kingdom of heaven.”— “Lay not up
for yourselves treasures on earth.”— “If thou wilt be perfect,
go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven.”—”For what is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”—Think
of this, Yankees!— “Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith as
a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing
shall be impossible unto you.”—Think of repeating these
things to a New England audience! thirdly, fourthly,
fifteenthly, till there are three barrels of sermons! Who, without
cant, can read them aloud? Who, without cant, can hear
them, and not go out of the meeting-house? They never were
read, they never were heard. Let but one of these sentences
be rightly read, from any pulpit in the land, and there would
not be left one stone of that meeting-house upon another.
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called
spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral
and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested
solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even. I